


Somebody Else

by sariloire



Series: Ashae Lavellan [10]
Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: ALL THE ANGST, Angst, F/M, Prompt Fic, Song fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-05-04 14:10:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5336948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sariloire/pseuds/sariloire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Solas and Ashae reflect on their relationship before, during, and after Crestwood.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Somebody Else

**Author's Note:**

> Based on the song “I Don’t Wanna Love Somebody Else” by A Great Big World. Lyrics inserted into the fic are the property of A Great Big World.

* * *

_Oh, I built a world around you.  
_ _You had me in a dream, I lived in every word you said.  
_ _The stars had aligned, I thought that I found you.  
_ _And I don’t wanna love somebody else._

* * *

Solas’ fingers trailed absently along Ashae’s shoulders as he looked at the ceiling, lying on his back in the bed they shared in her chambers in Skyhold. It was dark, the sun having long set and Ashae having been asleep for hours, the only light was from the moon shining through the windows of the room. Ashae’s face was tucked under his arm, her cheek pressed against his chest and he could feel her warm breath as she slept peacefully.

He loved her, more than he had ever loved anyone or anything in the entirety of his long life. His heart leapt when she smiled at him, his mind stuttered to a halt when she kissed him, his words failed him when her hands ran along his body at night. He called her  _ma vhenan_ , she was his heart. Everything he was, everything he felt, it was her. He had given his heart to her, and she had given her own to him in return.

He moved a hand to her hair, gazing down at her serene sleeping face as he brushed the disheveled strands from her eyes. She was so beautiful. Everything he could have asked for, everything he didn’t deserve. And she had committed herself to him. She called him  _ma sa'lath_ , her one love, and he had never doubted that she meant it.

Her spirit was the most beautiful part of her, though he enjoyed and cherished the body that was warm at his side. Her strength, her courage, her curiosity about the world around her, and about the world of the ancient elves that she had never known.  There was nothing about her that did not fascinate him still, even after all the time he had known her. To think that he had somehow crossed paths with someone such as her, someone that had drawn him so far from the dark place he had been when they met.

In his world of despair over the things he had caused, in his inner turmoil over trying to set things straight, she had been a beacon of light. She had been the one person that could save him, that  _had_  saved him. She had saved him from himself.

He shifted his position on the bed, edging to his side. Ashae mumbled incoherently in her sleep and shifted with him, turning her face so that the moonlight shining through a window shone on the lines of her blue vallaslin.

Solas traced a finger along her cheek, following the lines of the marks. The sight of them always caused a pain deep in his heart. The marks shouldn’t be there. If he had done what he meant to, no elves would have ever again wore the slave markings he had once removed from a population of former slaves belonging to the Evanuris.

His thumb caught on her ear, and Ashae jerked slightly, her eyes fluttering open at the touch. In the moonlight, Solas looked into the sleepy gaze of the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen. The green irises flecked with gold near their center, full of warmth and love.

“Having trouble sleeping?” Her voice was thick with sleep, and she moved an arm to wrap around his waist as she pulled him closer to her. Solas let her pull him closer, wrapping his own arms around her as he pressed his lips to her hair.

“Ir abelas for waking you, vhenan. I was merely thinking.”

“I didn’t know you let something like thinking keep you out of the Fade.” He felt the softness of her lips on his collarbone and heard the veiled teasing in her words. A smile pulled at his lips as she tugged on the blanket that she had kicked off earlier in the night, pulling it over them. “Do you want to talk about it?”

Solas shook his head, running his hands through her hair as he closed his eyes at the contentment he felt in his heart at that moment.“It was just restless thoughts, I believe I can sleep now.”

“Wake me up if you still have trouble sleeping.” Her words were growing softer and slower, as her head was again pressed to his chest and her breathing grew steady. “Goodnight, ma sa'lath.”

“Goodnight, vhenan.”

When Ashae was once again asleep, Solas made the decision he had been playing with for the last several weeks.

He was going to tell her.

He would tell her everything about himself, about what had happened in his past, about what he had to do.

She would understand, she wouldn’t be frightened of him. He had to believe that. The woman he loved, his heart, she would understand. And she would accept him.

* * *

_Oh, we left it all unspoken.  
We buried it alive, and now it’s screaming in my head._

* * *

He hadn’t been able to do it. He wasn’t brave enough to tell her. Instead he had told her of her vallaslin, removed the cruel markings from her trusting face, kissed her with all the love he felt for her in his near-bursting heart, and…

And then broke that heart, and his own, into pieces.

Solas made it out of the glen and onto the road before stumbling over a thorny root, the tears in his eyes blinding him to the path he was walking. He moved off the path before kneeling down, hidden from view, to rub the blood from his cut foot. His tears fell thick and fast as he sat there, unable to get up and go further.

Solas knew it was all his fault, starting from the day he had met Ashae and had felt the world change around him. From the moment his feelings began to grow past friendship. From the time she surprised him with the kiss in the Fade. From the beloved memory of the first time they made love. Every step of the way had been littered with warning signs for him to stop, to back off, to prevent this from happening. And he had pushed past them, clinging to Ashae’s hand as every moment spent with her had caused him to fall for her harder and harder.

And now he was here, silent sobs racking his body as he felt more self-hatred than he had felt in such a long time.

He loved her. He loved her so much. His heart. His vhenan. The most important person in his life, the best thing that had ever happened to him. And he had left her heartbroken, standing in a glen with tears glazing her eyes after she plead with him, asking why they couldn’t be together in this world.

Solas heard a noise and picked his head up, still hidden from view by the darkness and the foliage. He heard a breath coming in short gasps, broken by muffled sobs. Ashae walked along the path, a hand pressed over her mouth as if trying to silence the noise she was making. The other clutching her shirt, her hand pressed over her heart as she walked forward.

She hadn’t let her tears fall freely in front of him, but now Solas could see the dark streaks of her makeup in lines down her face. Every sob he heard escape her lips struck him as a blow, magnifying his own despair. He wanted nothing more in this world than to fly after her and pull her into his arms and beg for her to forgive him, to still love him, to ignore everything he had said to her when he said that they couldn’t be together.

But he did not.

Because he knew what he must do. He knew the steps his path would take him down, and it was not one that was going to end in happiness. His was not a path that would allow him to sleep at night in the arms of the woman he loved in the depths of his soul.

His was a path of death and destruction, and saving Ashae from seeing him walk down it was the only courtesy he could give to her now.

* * *

_Oh, I shouldn’t go on hoping that you will change your mind  
And one day we could start again._

* * *

Ashae didn’t think the tears were going to stop.

She scrubbed her face with a wet cloth, streaks of blue smearing along with her makeup, leaving a myriad of colours on both her face and the cloth. Even when her hand had been steady, not shaking from suppressing the desire to cry, she doubted that she would have been able to draw her vallaslin well enough to convince herself that it was still on her skin, that it hadn’t been ripped from her along with her heart.

She didn’t regret the vallaslin being gone, not when she thought about the true meanings of it, but it was too much to have lost that part of her heritage the same night she had lost Solas. And not a day had passed in the last week of being back in Skyhold that she hadn’t taken a small container of cosmetics and traced the familiar lines across her face so that she could recognise herself in the mirror for just a few moments before washing it off when the tears started.

She felt as if she had lost everything in that one night, and she didn’t know what she was supposed to do now. She was avoiding Solas, along with every other member of the Inquisition, as much as it was possible to. Her advisors had tried to hide their startled looks when they first saw her bare face, except for Josephine who had always been too transparent. Sera had laughed, Varric had questioned, and Dorian had made it a habit to check on her in her chambers every evening to make sure she was eating.

It was his visit that had left her, once again, in tears. His visits usually consisted of him telling stories about things that had happened in his past, or in Skyhold in general, to try and cheer her up. But he had told her today that Solas had asked if she was eating, if she was sick, if she was okay.

Part of her, the angry part that she wished would take over completely sometimes, wanted to go to the rotunda and rant and rage at Solas and tell him that he had no right to ask about her well-being when it was he that had caused her to be in this state. But then she had remembered the way his eyes looked at Crestwood when he had told her it was over and the times that she had caught a glimpse of him at Skyhold since then and saw his red-rimmed eyes, and instead she had just started crying again.

Solas was hurting too. She knew that. Even if she didn’t understand why he had left her, she knew it wasn’t because he had been unhappy. She didn’t think Solas was a good enough liar to fake the happiness she had seen in his eyes the times they were together.

She didn’t understand. She couldn’t understand. She was his vhenan. He had called her that, right before he had backed away to prevent her from reaching for his hands. He had told her he was sorry, before turning his back to walk away and leave her, brokenhearted, to travel back to Skyhold alone.

And here she was, with Dorian’s hand patting her shoulder as she scrubbed a fake vallaslin and makeup from her face with her tears helping the pigments to wash off her skin.

“I’m sorry.” The words came out as a whisper through her hands pressed against her face, trying to hide her eyes in shame. She was trying to hard to be strong when others were around. Trying, but failing miserably.

“Don’t be stupid.” Dorian said gruffly, wrapping his arm around her shoulders in a slight hug. “Cry it out, then we’ll go get a drink so you can sleep.”

Ashae agreed with the plan wholeheartedly. She was going to get some sleep that night, even if it required ingesting enough alcohol to not be able to notice the empty coldness of the other side of her mattress.

* * *

_Well I don’t care if loneliness kills me  
I don’t wanna love somebody else._

* * *

It had been three months since Solas had left after Corypheus was defeated. He had left without saying goodbye, without leaving a note, without giving her a single reason for anything that had ever happened between them, except for telling her that what they had had was real.

As if the pain in her heart when she thought of him wasn’t enough to remind her that it had been real.

“Inquisitor, dear, are you listening?” Ashae jerked her head up to look at the young Orlesian noble that was visiting from Val Royeaux. She had indeed not been listening to her.

“I apologise, my mind wandered. What were you asking?”

The lady was good natured, and repeated her question, reminding Ashae why she had mentally checked out of the conversation. “My older brother sincerely wishes to meet you, Lady Inquisitor. I believe you two would get along grandly!”

Ashae placed a careful blank expression on her face as she listened to the woman prattle on about her brother. Indeed the man sounded dashing with his ‘long black hair’ and ‘dark brown eyes’, but she found her mind wandering this time to the shop she had visited twice in Val Royeaux. The first time had been with Solas, though he hadn’t been at her side when she entered the shop, and the second time had been by herself, weeks before Solas had taken her to Crestwood, when she had went to once again wistfully peruse the long ivory lace gowns.

She now hated the very thought of that visit, the thought of how stupid she had been to start planning for a future that had not been guaranteed and that was now gone forever.

She still loved him. As much as she hated herself for it, as much as she would have denied it had anyone but herself said it, she still loved him and waited every day to hear news of him from Leliana.

And as angry as she was over him leaving her, she knew that if he walked back into Skyhold the first thing she would do was run into his arms and never let go of him.

Her love. Her heart. Her sa’lath.

“Inquisitor, are you quite alright?”

Ashae was jerked back to the present at her words, and felt the wetness on her cheeks from tears she didn’t know she was shedding. She nodded quickly, wiping at her eyes. “Yes, I’m sorry, I just-“ others were looking now, curious at why the Inquisitor was weeping while talking to a visitor. “I should go, I’m sorry.”

She stood up from the table and walked away as fast as she could without running, her feet leading her down a familiar path until she walked into the large, round room. She stilled at the entrance, her eyes scanning the walls once again, checking to see if anything had changed since she had last been in here.

But no, it was the same as always, the frescoes covered to prevent any damage.

Ashae walked to the desk and pulled Solas’ old chair out, sitting in it as her hands ran along the desk, still set as it had been the night before they had left to fight Corypheus. The last time she had been in this room with Solas, when he had held her one last time before turning away.

She crossed her arms on the desk and buried her face in them, willing her tears to stop from falling as she breathed in the scent of the desk and room that she had become so familiar with because of the man who had made it his own.

She wanted to forget the pain of losing him, she did.

She did.

But she couldn’t bear the thought of forgetting him. Of not loving him. Of not knowing that he loved her in return.

Her sa’lath.

The one she had given her heart to.

The one who had not given it back before he left.

* * *

 _Oh, I thought that I could change you_  
_I thought that we would be the greatest story that I tell._  
_I know that it’s time to tell you it’s over,_  
_But I don’t wanna love somebody else._

* * *

 


End file.
